Cross-partisanship and the vulnerability democracy: how civility and nonpartisanship undermined civil society in interwar Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACT Exclusionary nationalist movements’ rise in recent years challenges liberal democracy’s trust in political institutions’ ability to neutralize and incorporate extremism. The crisis of liberal democracy likewise questions liberal civil society's emphasis on associational membership’s intrinsic democratic side-effects. The study proposes a partisanship spectrum integrating attitudes to conflict into civil society theory, suggesting the centrality of cross-partisanship in mediating modern society’s unavoidable conflicts, a question central to civil society theory and modern democracies. Germany’s first school of public affairs serves as a historical case study to better understand how cross-partisanship addressed the extreme political polarization, radicalization of public discourse, and violence challenging interwar Germany’s transition to democracy. While honouring political factionalism, cross-partisanship (Überparteilichkeit) countered extremism through a correct understanding of political facts and a common commitment to republican institutions. Relying on archival sources, I show that when cross-partisanship was equated to nonpartisanship, it favoured the penetration of extremism by emphasizing compromise and equal representation of all political parties, including the Nazi Party. The question of how to build a civil society is as crucial today as it was in interwar Germany.